enum abuse

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 13:21:39 -0500, Steve Teale  
<steve.teale at britseyeview.com> wrote:

> I just wonder slightly why a language that prides itself so on its  
> metaprogramming capabilities does not have a keyword that makes it  
> obvious

For a *VERY* short time (I think one version perhaps), we had the  
'manifest' keyword which was supposed to mean manifest constant.

It was removed, Andrei was a very stanch supporter of enum being the  
manifest constant keyword.  This comment in an early debate about what  
became the inout feature is pretty explanatory:  
https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1961#c3

"And enum... you'll have to yank that out from my dead cold hands.  
Extending
enum instead of adding yet another way of defining symbolic constants is  
The
Right Thing to do. I am sure people would have realized how ridiculous the
whole "manifest" thing is if we first proposed it. We just can't define one
more way for each kind of snow there is."

-Steve